Tuesday, June 6, 2017

This Tuesday news thread is a weekly feature here at Big Picture Agriculture.

Readers,
I must say that over the past few months it has been a challenge trying to navigate through the multitudes of bizarre, confusing, ego-infused headlines and tweets when gathering news. While recognizing that politics and agriculture are forever intertwined, my aim here is to present real news, non-regurgitated news, and non-politically-motivated news. Philosophically, I try to come at this from the Taoist state of "wu wei", trying to notice and observe trends and important stories rather than judge, though with a moral obligation to defend our environment when viewing the world holistically and the Earth as Gaia. Only if I had a crystal ball about the future and knew everything would I be qualified to say more. As for the tit for tat headlines, my personal antidote is to listen to classical music and tune out.

Quotes:"About a decade ago, there were 4,000 independent apple growers in Washington. Today there’s 1,450." and "You can be the best farmer in the world and still go broke." and "It’s never been like it is right now, never."

Quote:"A woman who was given the mushrooms by a forager cooked them for herself, her husband, her 18-month-old daughter, her sister and a friend. They all became ill, and the toddler and the woman’s sister needed liver transplants."